How did New Atheism evolve?

Where did New Atheism come from?

It's remarkable that evolutionary biologists (atheists) obsess about the evolutionary origins of religion, churning out fairy tale after fairy tale, in good evolutionary style.

But they never speculate about the evolutionary origin of atheism.  Curious, huh?

Well, I'm going to speculate. Not about atheism generally, but about New Atheism. And not about the evolutionary origin, which is b.s., but about the cultural origin, which is not b.s.

My observations:

Atheism has always been with us. In the West, there were classical atheists Diagorus, Democritous, Epicurus, Lucretious, etc. In the middle ages, few people openly espoused atheism, although there is no reason to believe that atheism didn't persist among a fringe, unspoken. In the early modern period, atheism became a lot more vocal (de Sade, the Jacobians, Feuerbach, Marx, etc.

Modern polls show that explicit atheist belief constitutes less than 5% of the public (in the US).  There are larger numbers who are practical atheists. They don't have organized beliefs that God does not exist. They merely live their lives without reference to Him.

I don't see any evidence to suggest that atheism as a coherent viewpoint is any more common today than it ever was. It is, and has always been, a fringe belief. Practical atheism may be on the rise, especially in the dying secular cultures of Europe.

Why does atheism, in the form of New Atheism, seem to be on the rise?

I suggest three reasons:

1) Actual coherent explicit atheist belief (ala Dawkins, etc) is not really on the rise. It is a fringe, and has always been. Practical atheism is on the rise. The reason is that modern amenities provide a remarkably effective cushion between us and the shocks our flesh is heir to. C.S. Lewis made this remarkable observation: for most of the history of man, religion was practiced in a world without anesthesia. The reality of life and death were inescapable. Pain and suffering at a level we cannot imagine were a normal part of life. Infected tooth: pull it out with pliers. Injured leg: cut it off with a saw. No novocain, no anesthesia. Get appendicitis? You die, in about a week, in unspeakable agony.

Modern medicine provides us with the opportunity to live our lives without significant pain. We are born, live, and die in an anesthetic cocoon. Why bother thinking about ultimate reality, when we have Vicodin, Prosac and Valium? Practical atheism is now, for the first time, a real option. Aldous Huxley understood.

2) Science has been hijacked by atheists as a new religion. Unreflective people can accept the assertion that 'science explains everything. Why do we need God?' Of course, this viewpoint is stupid. Science is the methodological exploration of nature, whereas religion is the exploration of ultimate reality.  Science is not philosophy; it cannot explain itself. It cannot explain ultimate origins. It cannot explain 'ought'; it can only explain 'is', and even that only in a limited way. Scientism is perhaps the second most idiotic philosophical error of modern times. It is ubiquitous among atheists, who are devotees of the most idiotic philosophical error.

3) New atheists have more outlets for their view than atheists had in the past. Any crank can have a blog (I know.. I know.. I have a blog..), and it's a safe bet that 99% of the New Atheists today would never have had a public forum for their nonsense before the internet and the explosion in information in the public sphere. Crazy stuff sells. P.Z. Myers' bigoted rants attract a massive audience. A fraud like Dawkins who tried to peddle his ignorant elementary-school disproofs of God's existence at Oxford several centuries ago would have been kicked out, not for irreligion, but for incompetence.

Today, incompetence has a market.

That's all for now. Writing too much about atheists at a time gives me a headache. I'll discuss other reasons for the apparent rise of New Atheism if I think of any.

Techne's questions for Coyne and Dawkins about Natural Selection:

Commentor Techne has a superb post on Natural Selection on Telic Thoughts:

An Open Letter to Professors Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins on the Nature of Natural Selection

by Techne

To Professors Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins,

The concept of natural selection on the surface seems to be a rather simple concept to grasp and you both have explained the concept in your respective writings. I have a few question regarding your views about the nature of natural selection, questions that I feel are not explicitly answered or addressed in your various writings. I have four basic questions, each with their own subset of questions:

1) Is natural selection a prescriptive or descriptive term?

2) Is natural selection a mechanism?

3) Is natural selection a cause or a force?

4) Is natural selection a process or an outcome?

Good questions, all. Although Darwinists assert that natural selection is a central mechanism/cause/force in evolution, its surprising how evasive they can be when asked deeper questions about selection.

Question 1: Prescriptive or Descriptive?

Do you view natural selection as prescriptive whereby natural selection is a cause or a force that "guides" the interaction or change of traits of biological entities, it "maintains" the prevalence of beneficial mutations, or "limits" or "favours" some variations over other variations, or "steers" biological change toward the local maxima in the "fitness landscape". On this view natural selection is an agent (albeit impersonal and blind, as in non-directional) that causally influences biological change by “maintaining” or “favouring” or “producing fitter” biological entities etc.

Agency means capacity to act as a cause of change in something else. Agents are things-- people, planets, rocks, animals, etc.  For example, if you are hit by an out-of-control red truck, you are hit by the truck, not by the 'out-of-control' and not by the 'red'.

Change in things is caused by things, not by ideas or by properties.

Natural selection is defined as 'differential reproductive success in a population'. There are variants on this definition, but all variants preserve the implicit assertion that natural selection is an effect of adaptive causes. Change in population is caused by things-- predators, reproductive organs of varying effectiveness, muscles of various strength and speed, etc. Only things can have agency and cause change. An animal attacked by an angry brown bear is attacked by the bear, not by the 'angry' and not by the 'brown'.

But 'differential reproductive success in a population' is an effect of agents, not an agent itself. An idea or an observation is not an agent.

Do you view natural selection as a descriptive term that describes what happens when you have individuals in a population that have some kind of variation (e.g. genetic) and fitness differences and are able to pass on their traits

Techne notes that natural selection is a description-- an observation-- of change, not an agent or cause of change.

So what is natural selection?

More to come.

Blessed Mother Theresa

Marcia Morrissey at Patheos with a lovely tribute to Mother Theresa:

Bl. Teresa: A Light in Darkness, Shining Bright

Decades of spiritual dryness did not stop Mother Teresa from believing and moving forward.

By Marcia Morrissey, September 01, 2011

September 5 will be the anniversary of the 1997 death of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta. I always admired her work with the poorest of the poor. I grew up looking through the missionary magazines my grandparents had on their coffee table. They made an impression on me even as a small girl, and ever since then I have had a heart for missionaries.

When Ed and I began working with Marriage Encounter, we learned that Mother Teresa had met with a group of supporters from around the country in the dormitory buildings we leased for our organization. She had been there twice—in June of 1982, and again in 1984.

I spoke to Jerry, who—with his wife Marilyn—worked with Marriage Encounter from the early days and were privileged to meet Mother Theresa when she visited. His impression of her was that she was tiny, very friendly, and a hugger. She also was firmly in charge of what was happening. She was no pushover for a documentary crew that was following her around on her trip.

I started to think of her as our organization's unofficial "patron saint" and an inspiration for our mission helping marriages. I began to read as much as I could about her life and work. The more I learned about this tiny, tough and courageous nun, the more I appreciated her, and she became a personal model for me, in what God called me to do in my own life. Especially inspiring to me is one of her most famous quotes: "We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love."

Born in Albania, she became a citizen of India. A Catholic nun, she felt her calling was to the world: "As to my heart, I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus."

She had a burning love for Christ, and all she wanted was, "To quench His desire for love and for souls." I've heard that in her chapels, next to the cross there is a plaque that says, "I thirst."

At 18, she joined the sisters of Loreto, and—desiring to become a missionary—left for India, to teach at a girl's school. For the first 20 years of her life as a nun, she happily served as a teacher, and later as the school's principal. She was known for her prayer life, love for her fellow Sisters and students, charity, courage, and hard work.

It was during a train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling, for her annual retreat, that Teresa received her "inspiration," her "call within a call." She felt the Lord directing her, giving her a burning desire to satiate His thirst for love for all humanity, especially for the poor who didn't know of His love for them. It became the force of her life's work.

After almost 2 years of prayer, testing and discernment she was given permission to leave her convent to go out to minister to the poor, the sick, orphans, and the dying in the slums of Calcutta. Wearing her now famous white and blue-boarded sari she went out to find and serve Him in "the unwanted, unloved, uncared-for." After a few months she was joined by some of her former students.

On October 7, 1950 the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity became officially established. Her work spread and expanded throughout the whole world, and not only to religious congregations, but even a lay apostolate—Co-workers of Mother Theresa—people of many faiths and nationalities, who shared her passion and heart for service to the sick and suffering.

She saw the face of God in every person, and in turn showed His sacrificial love for each soul.

A couple of weeks ago at a pro-life event I attended, a Priest told of working with her sisters and the poor they cared for. He said that he cleaned their toilets, helped care for the sick, and comforted the dying. Some fought and stole from each other because that was how they knew how to survive. The sisters would show them sacrificial love, and through their example over time they would respond to that love they never felt before.

Only after her death was it discovered that she suffered from what she called her "darkness," the "painful night" of her soul. She walked by faith even though she didn't "feel" God. She believed and gave her life over to Him in spite of this inner "darkness" and feeling of separation, which led her to an ever-deeper unity with Him. She experienced His thirst and desire for love so she could identify with the poor who felt unloved and unwanted: "The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."

She faithfully and tirelessly worked for God, trusting that He was there even though she often didn't feel His presence. She took by faith, not by feelings or emotional experiences, the work she was called by Him to do.

She lived the verse, "We walk by faith not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7).

I have a special respect and love for Mother Theresa. The story of the "Saint of the Gutters" has always inspired me. She earned the moniker because she would search the gutters of Calcutta for the destitute and the dying, and bring them to her shelter. If she could nurse them to health, she would. If she couldn't save them, she would stay with them, so they wouldn't die alone.  She would care for anyone who was destitute, sick, or abandoned. Her answer to abortion was simple: 'Give the babies to me'.

She had a long and very difficult 'dark night of the soul', as many deeply holy people do. The dark night has been known by Christian mystics for many centuries, and was described most beautifully by St. John of the Cross and by St. Theresa of Avila, his spiritual counselor and friend, in the 16th century. 

Contemplatives understand the dark night as the clearing from the soul of human impressions about God, so God Himself may enter. We ordinary Christians understand God in necessarily superficial ways. When a soul gets near to God, these superficial understandings impede our direct experience of God, and need to be purged, so Reality can enter. It is a painful process, and it feels like abandonment and loss of faith. Yet it culminates in a union with God. 

St John of the Cross-- the greatest Spanish poet-- wrote about the dark night and the union of the soul with God:

Once in a dark of night, 

Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose

(O coming of delight!)

And went, as no one knows, 

When all my house lay long in deep repose

All in the dark went right,

Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes, 

(O coming of delight!)

In dark when no one knows, 

When all my house lay long in deep repose.

And in the luck of night

In secret places where no other spied 

I went without my sight

Without a light to guide

Except the heart that lit me from inside.

It guided me and shone

Surer than noonday sunlight over me,

And lead me to the one

Whom only I could see

Deep in a place where only we could be.

O guiding dark of night!

O dark of night more darling than the dawn!

O night that can unite

A lover and loved one,

A lover and loved one moved in unison.

And on my flowering breast

Which I had kept for him and him alone 

He slept as I caressed

And loved him for my own,

Breathing an air from redolent cedars blown.

And from the castle wall 

The wind came down to winnow through his hair

Bidding his fingers fall,

Searing my throat with air

And all my senses were suspended there. 

I stayed there to forget.

There on my lover, face to face, I lay.

All ended, and I let

My cares all fall away

Forgotten in the lilies on that day.

Blessed Mother Theresa-- hopefully St. Mother Theresa soon!-- is now with God, all her cares fallen away. May we follow her in service and spirit.

Atheism is never having to say you're sorry

Commentor oleg's got his panties in a bunch:

1. You [must] apologize for calling me a thug. Which I am not.

Actually, I didn't single him out as a thug. I called all atheists thugs, at least the ones who censor, intimidate, etc. Seems pretty obvious.

If oleg believes in freedom of speech, and abhors atheists' efforts to censor criticism of their creation myth (Darwin's theory) in public schools, and abhors atheists' censorship of public prayer at high school graduation ceremonies and censorship of any expression of religious belief in a public forum (they only seem to censor expressions of Christianity), I'll be delighted to walk back my assertion that he is a thug. Oddly, I haven't heard oleg express committment to these rudimentary defenses of freedom. If I've missed them, he should let me know.

Amusingly, oleg (inadvertently of course) brings up another matter in which atheists are worthy of ridicule. I've written a recent post on determinism and free will, and it's a chortle to apply atheist arguments to oleg's pout.

Atheism, in modern form, is essentially philosophical naturalism, which is  a viewpoint nearly always accompanied by determinism.

Determinism is the view that we have no libertarian free will. All of our "choices" are illusory. We are material bodies in a material universe. Our acts are all determined by our material history-- laws of nature, chance events, etc. We have no genuine freedom.

Of course, oleg's request for an apology presumes two things:

1) I could have chosen not to call oleg a thug. But atheism/determinism denies that I had a libertarian choice.

2) I could choose to apologize. But I have no choice to do so. I'm determined by material processes. Que sera, sera.

Of course, nobody really believes that crap. Not even atheists. But it's part of the liturgy. Until someone calls you a name.

Atheists have three consistent characteristics:

1)  Philosophical stupidity, to the point of ceaseless self-refutation.

2)  Inveterate propensity to the use of censorship and force.

3)  Oleaginous sense of victimhood. Which is odd for an ideological cult whose only unique contributions to human affairs have been the Reign of Terror, the Gulag, the Killing Fields, and the governing institutions of North Korea.

People have been so mean to atheists!

But heck, oleg, I can't apologize to you. For anything. How can a chemistry set apologize to a meat robot? Can litmus paper apologize for turning blue? Can baking soda apologize to vinegar for making a salt ('I'm sorry.... that was so base of me')?

And atheists assert that there is no objective moral law with a Source independent of man. Morality is merely subjective opinion, you say. To what objective standard of morality would I appeal in my apology?

And how can I apologize if I have no free will? Everything I do is caused by laws of physics. I can't choose to apologize, any more than I chose to call you a thug. Free will is an illusion.

Which all works out well for atheists, in the larger sense. If atheists had to apologize for atheism, they would do nothing but apologize. Merely apologizing for Dawkins' chapter on the cosmological argument in the God Delusion would take centuries. '...forgive me for mangling logic...'. That's why atheists don't have confessionals.

Can you imagine apologizing for Stalin?

But don't trouble yourself, oleg, with apologies for state atheism or apologies for atheism's mangling of philosophy and ethics. Your own ideology insulates you from accountability.

Atheism is never having to say you're sorry.

Evolutionary biology is shedding evolutionary psychology

It's like the end of smallpox. 

From Discover:

The end of evolutionary psychology

A new paper in PLoS Biology is rather like the last person to leave turning the light off. Evolutionary psychology as we understood it in the 1980s and 1990s is over. Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology:

None of the aforementioned scientific developments render evolutionary psychology unfeasible; they merely require that EP should change its daily practice. The key concepts of EP have led to a series of widely held assumptions (e.g., that human behaviour is unlikely to be adaptive in modern environments, that cognition is domain-specific, that there is a universal human nature), which with the benefit of hindsight we now know to be questionable. A modern EP would embrace a broader, more open, and multi-disciplinary theoretical framework, drawing on, rather than being isolated from, the full repertoire of knowledge and tools available in adjacent disciplines. Such a field would embrace the challenge of exploring empirically, for instance, to what extent human cognition is domain-general or domain specific, under what circumstances human behaviour is adaptive, how best to explain variation in human behaviour and cognition. The evidence from adjacent disciplines suggests that, if EP can reconsider its basic tenets, it will flourish as a scientific discipline.

Translation: 'we need to scrap this hoax and restore some pretense of science.'

Discover:

By “evolutionary psychology” the authors are not addressing a field just at the intersection of evolutionary biology and psychology. Rather, they’re speaking to the group of scholars who came to the fore in the 1990s under the leadership of Leda Cosmides and John Toobey as UCSB. These thinkers adhered to a specific set of parameters outlined above in regards to the basic theoretical framework of evolution and cognition through which their empirical research was framed. I can not speak to the cognitive psychology, the presumed massive modularity for example, but it does seem that their assumptions about human evolutionary history are a touch antiquated.

Evolutionary psychology is merely the application of evolutionary biology 'logic' to psychology. Stuff changes, survivors survive.  Junk science.

Evolutionary psychology's assumptions about human evolutionary history aren't "antiquated". Its methodological assumptions are too similar to those of evolutionary biology, and its becoming an embarrassment to the atheist coven.

People are starting to notice. Time to cut it loose.

Sometimes I wonder if this might be a feature and not a bug. I’ve been told personally by two people who knew the goings on at the UT Austin evolutionary psychology program that there wasn’t much emphasis on keeping up to date on the most recent work in evolutionary or genetic science (or at least there wasn’t in the mid-2000s, which is when my sources were familiar with the state of the research being done). The impression I received is that that would just muddy the waters and weaken the theoretical basis of the research program.

 Fact-free storytelling is a feature, not a bug, of the whole Darwinian project.

But sometimes the bedrock needs to be shaken up. It seems that time is upon us. From what I can gather evolutionary psychology was very much a response to the sociobiology controversies of the 1970s. On the one hand there was a real scientific distinction. Many of the sociobiologists were fundamentally biologists dabbling in social theory, while evolutionary psychology was more often dominated by social scientists who took biology seriously. But the reality is that sociobiology by 1980 had a major public relations problem...

That damned Eichmann ruined sociobiology for everyone.

The evolutionary psychology paradigm was more constrained and tightly focused, and its emphasis on human universals helped it mollify somewhat the charges of ‘genetic determinism.’ After all, genetic determinism is a lot less threatening when it is proposing theses which one finds appealing and praiseworthy. 

'Positive eugenics' has a nicer ring.

 At this point talking about the “Paleolithic Mind” and the “environment of evolutionary adaptedness” seems quaint.

It seemed quaint in the 1970's too. Was b.s., is b.s.

One must be cautious, knowing that a genomic region may have been the target of powerful selective forces within the last ~10,000 years does not usually transparently tell us exactly the functional fitness rationale for that adaptive event. 

 No matter. Just make up a story. This is evolution, after all.

The letter of Toobey and Cosmide’s paradigm will be brutally violated in the coming decades. That’s science, the smasher of idols.

This idol was created by science. It's not being "smashed" because it has been 'found to be wrong'.  How could 'stuff changes and survivors survive' be wrong?


Evolutionary psychology is being smashed because it's being understood by too many people, and it is an embarrassment to the atheist cult that is trying desperately to conceal the junk science at Darwinism's core.

Darwinism is layers of wrapped nonsense. Banality and tautology, all the way down. Evolutionary biology is shedding evolutionary psychology, like a snake sheds skin.

Why I do this

Commentor RickK:

Egnor cares not for reality or honesty - he just wants to piss people off so they'll notice him.

Commentor heleen:

Why does Egnor defend Coulter? To get the fun of shouting matches with atheists? Not likely for a serious person. Why should Egnor pose as anti-evolution given that Egnor considers evolutionary biology is good science. What is the purpose of this post?

Why do I do this? Good question. I've wondered myself. It's not like I don't have enough other stuff to do.

Perhaps it's for religious reasons-- to advance Christ's work on earth. Not that I'm a particularly good emissary, but somebody needs to stand up and speak out about atheism, and I have some minimal aptitude for that. I was an atheist myself years ago, and I know the intellectual darkness, and I'm grateful others spoke up and helped me.

Of course, perhaps it's ego. I try not the think this way, but I'm human.

I think the main reason, probably, is that I hate bullies. Atheists have tried so hard to destroy the careers of good scientists, like Sternberg, Behe, Dembski, Luskin, Gonzalez, Marks, Crocker, Gaskell. Each of these folks has been put through a gauntlet of hateful personal spite and professional destruction. I admire them for their courage. They stood up to the atheist infestation in science. They told the truth. Nature is saturated with evidence of intelligent agency, and is in fact unintelligible without at least tacit recognition of this basic fact.

Fortunately, I'm in a academic position in which I'm safe. Atheists can't do much to me, although they've tried. If I were younger, or less established, or untenured, I'd have a lot more to worry about.

Dealing with atheists is like walking past a mean dog each day. The dog lunges, but he's chained . Nasty, but harmless. Just stay beyond the reach of his chain. Sometimes it's irresistable to taunt him a bit.

Atheism is so stupid that taunting them is safe.  They're all bluster, and sneer, and spit. They will try to destroy you professionally if they can. I am fortunate to be in a position where they can't. Otherwise they have nothing. They have no logic. Their 'science' is banal. Their ideology is gibberish. They have no weapons but fear.

Atheists are like the dog.

Atheism is like the chain.

Why are peacocks sexy and Scandanavians blond? A Darwinist perspective.

Commentor bachfiend on my mockery of natural selection:

bachfiend:

But sexual selection isn't natural selection.

Right. Natural selection is "more effective replicators more effectively replicate", whereas sexual selection is "more effective replicators more effectively replicate".

One theory is before the "whereas", and one is after it. Different theories.

Peahens selecting peacocks on the basis of the size or perfection of the peacock's tails (and it's not certain what the peahens find so attractive) isn't the same as peacocks dying early because they can't avoid predators or get enough food to survive.

Right. In natural selection, reproductive success is critical. In sexual selection, reproductive success is critical. Completely different theories.

Why do Scandanavians have blue eyes, blond hair and fair skin. If you were an adaptionist, you'd say that in scandanavian winters there isn't much sunshine so having fair skin is a means of increasing vitamin D synthesis in the skin.

Could be.

Jared Diamond's explanation is that the small groups of humans who happened to reach Scandanavia after the end of the last glaciation just happened to be blue eyed, blond and fair skinned.

Could be.

I'm waiting for the science. There is science here, isn't there?

He goes on to note that what humans find sexually attractive in mates is usually limited to what they see in their childhood...

Sure. Humans find that huge bossy people several multiples of their height and weight are incredibly sexually attractive.

"Step on me... pleeese... step on me..."

"I looove it when you tell me to clean my room..."

That explains why some guys like Amazons...

leading to xenophobia, so if anyone with a new mutation causing darker skin wouldn't be able to find a mate.

Xenophobia: "No same-sized people need apply!"

We hate people who aren't much much bigger than we are.

Having blue eyes in snow conditions isn't an adaptation, because the individual would be more prone to snow blindness.

"Olaf, I can't find Jared Diamond's new book. The snow is too bright..."

Open to you now to mount a counterargument ...

Sigh...